Learning Race, Learning Place

Shaping Racial Identities and Ideas in African American Childhoods

Erin N. Winkler

Publication Year: 2012

In an American society both increasingly diverse and increasingly segregated, the signals children receive about race are more confusing than ever. In this context, how do children negotiate and make meaning of multiple and conflicting messages to develop their own ideas about race? Learning Race, Learning Place engages this question using in-depth interviews with an economically diverse group of African American children and their mothers. Through these rich narratives, Erin N. Winkler seeks to reorient the way we look at how children develop their ideas about race through the introduction of a new framework—comprehensive racial learning—that shows the importance of considering this process from children’s points of view and listening to their interpretations of their experiences, which are often quite different from what the adults around them expect or intend. At the children’s prompting, Winkler examines the roles of multiple actors and influences, including gender, skin tone, colorblind rhetoric, peers, family, media, school, and, especially, place. She brings to the fore the complex and understudied power of place, positing that while children’s racial identities and experiences are shaped by a national construction of race, they are also specific to a particular place that exerts both direct and indirect influence on their racial identities and ideas.

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

First, and most importantly, I thank the young people and mothers who so
graciously and candidly shared their stories for this study. It goes without
saying that there would be no book without their generous willingness to let
me into their lives. Would it not breach confidentiality, I would thank each of
them by name. ...

Chapter 1. Comprehensive Racial Learning, Grounded in Place

“Show me the smart child. Why is he the smart child?” “Show me the dumb
child. Why is he the dumb child?” “Show me the nice child.” “Show me the
mean child.” So went the questions posed to black and white children in the
recent, widely discussed series on CNN.1 ...

Chapter 2. Rhetoric versus Reality: Ambivalence about Race and Racism

Mahogany, an engaging fifteen-year-old eighth-grader, exudes both toughness
and tenderness as she talks about her experiences growing up in Detroit.
While she says the adults in her life would describe her as “loud,” “having an
attitude,” and “greedy,” she is patiently entertaining her young niece, whom she
has the responsibility of babysitting during our interview. ...

This chapter begins to reveal the ways place emerges as influential in
children’s comprehensive racial learning. Remember that by place, I mean not
only the location and geography, but the material environment (buildings,
vacant spaces, public spaces, and so on), the social character and cultural
milieu, ...

Chapter 4. Place Matters: Shaping Mothers' Messages

While the last chapter looked at how place directly and actively teaches children
about race, this chapter theorizes the indirect role of place in children’s
comprehensive racial learning. Specifically, I will argue that place influences
what mothers choose to teach their children about race and racism. ...

Chapter 5. Competing with Society: Responsive Racial Socialization

Michelle laughs freely when sharing stories about her thirteen-year-old
daughter, Elina, and her ten-year-old son, Carlos, often beginning, “Now, this is
so funny.” Her pride in her children is clear as she shares details about their talents,
interests, and personalities. “They just tickle me sometimes,” she says,
smiling. ...

Chapter 7. Conclusion: "I Learn Being Black from Everywhere I Go"

There is a debate among scholars over which sources of information (sometimes
called “socializing agents”) are most powerful in how children learn about
race. The literature falls into two broad camps: those who believe the family is
the most critical agent of socialization and those who argue that forces outside
the family have more influence. ...

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Erin N. Winkler is an associate professor of Africology at the University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She received her PhD in African American studies from
the University of California, Berkeley. Her work on how children develop ideas
about race and racism has appeared in a number of books and journals. ...

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